KARACHI, June 24: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation failed to supply, once again, uninterrupted electricity to people on Monday.
People calling from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, North Karachi, New Karachi, Landhi, Federal B. Area, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, North Nazimabad, Korangi, Muslimabad and Orangi Town told Dawn that they had faced power shutdowns on Sunday night as well as on Monday morning.
Calling from Federal B. Area, Block 12, a resident said when his locality lost electricity for the fourth time, he drove to his regional complaint centre. “When I created a great fuss there I was told that most of the time the KESC switched off supply to give a breathing space to its equipment.”
“An official told me that in summers people tended to consume more power than they did under normal circumstances. This caused overloading which pole-mounted transformers found hard to withstand. The transmission and distribution staff turned off the PMTs of an area by turns,” he said.
A resident of North Nazimabad, Block A, said it was beyond his comprehension why the KESC shut off the power supply only for 15-20 minutes. “Don’t you think the KESC is honour-bound to inform its customers of the reason for such abrupt power shutdowns?” he asked.
KESC’S VERSION: A KESC spokesman said on Monday that power theft and kunda connection was the primary reason for local area breakdowns and the KESC was working to eradicate the menace and ensure quality power supply to the city, adds APP.
He referred to overheating and overloading of transformers and tripping of feeders and pointed out that an analysis by the KESC engineers revealed that excessive use of undeclared electrical load bypassing the meters by the middle income consumers was causing excessive burden on the distribution system leading to repeated faults and inconvenience.
To defeat the menace, he said, the KESC management was adopting newer methods. In one such move last week the KESC’s vigilance wing headed by Lt-Col Mushtaq Awan constituted a special task force including engineers of the meter department.
He said mobile meter testing teams and a representative of the electric inspector, government of Sindh, checked the city’s posh residential areas where there was higher power theft and the users were identified by concerned citizens and good consumers of the neighbourhood.
The vigilance wing, he said, had adopted the “killing power theft” strategy with politeness and on-the-spot-consumer’s presence.
The special task force checked three posh residential complexes inhabited by retired and serving high officials and rich and influential notables in Clifton, Saddar and Gulshan-i-Iqbal areas.
In these complexes a total of 1,155 metered KESC connections were checked, out of which 643 meters were found with drastically low consumption compared to the use.
The team detected 300 bypassed meters which were rectified and sealed on the spot by the team of meter department. The consumers were informed that a supplementary bill would be issued to them.
The politeness extended by the team was that power supply was not disconnected, the spokesman said.
He said the remaining 343 meters were sticky or had stopped registering consumption.